SH Archive 1893 Expo: Beacon of Progress Project

[Mike Nolan]

Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: WarningGuy
Date: 2019-12-15 05:05:04
Reaction Score: 0

One TOWER to rule them all...

If this thing did once exist was it the tower that GAVE to all ?

I ran into this very interesting bit of information while doing some other research.

So Constant-Désiré Despradelle was a French-born architect and professor of architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who, through his teaching, influenced a generation of Beaux-Arts style architects and helped to popularize this style throughout North America. He actually attended Ecole des Beaux-Arts which we have discussed here before:

• École des Beaux-Arts

The reason I bring him up here (from wiki):
"Despradelle's most famous project was the unrealized "Beacon of Progress" (also simply called "the Beacon"). The Beacon was a towering monument intended for the site in Chicago, Illinois of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Despradelle designed the Beacon to represent the founding of America, and so it consisted of thirteen obelisks which he said represented the original thirteen colonies. The group of obelisks merged to form a single spire soaring 1,500 feet (approximately 457 metres) above Chicago. This is similar to the height of the Sears Tower, built in the city in 1973.
The Beacon would also represent the future with its benefits to be drawn from "technological leaps forward" in the approaching century. At the apex was to be a brilliant beacon of light with a figurative sculpture called Spirit of Progress to embody what Despradelle called the upward-looking Christian in America. The figure would face Lake Michigan as a monument to the genius of the people and to the dominant feature of their life.
Despradelle continued to refine his design after the Exposition was over, and although the Beacon was never built, the strength of his final 1900 drawings "drew a great deal of attention and had a lasting impact" in the Francophone world. Those drawings retained by the French government from domestically-hosted exhibitions were included in the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition in London, a "tribute to [this] teacher of so many upcoming architects, but also recognition and understanding of Despradelle's creative vision.""

Looking for more info on this 'unrealized' project, I found this article from Chicago Tribune July 15, 1900 that included the following pictures:

View attachment 35633

Which is why I decided to post this.

Once again I find myself staring at a picture scratching my head and wondering if I'm looking at an illustration or a photograph. Anybody have any ideas??

Is it just me or does this picture/photo remind anyone of that old film ? I think of the name of it atm.

 

[Felix Noille]

Note: This post was recovered from the Sh.org archive.
Username: Felixnoille
Date: 2019-12-21 12:16:09
Reaction Score: 2

I came across this topic some time ago, before I joined the forum and it has fascinated me ever since. What I don't understand is that if the architect was trying to sell this monument as a project and raise money for it, why depict it in such a desolate, barren landscape surrounded by rubble?

I have done many pencil drawings throughout my lifetime and if the pictures in the OP are drawings, well, I take my hat off to the artist, in fact not just my hat, but everything else as well. I have also dabbled with trick photography as it was called in the days before Photoshop and in my opinion what we are looking at is multiple exposures and/or a montage. The negatives back in those days were massive and easily manipulated by hand. In particular the atmospheric mist or low cloud cover seems to have been added after to great effect.

Other architectural work attributed to him and there are only 3 in his Wikipedia page, don't really seem to exhibit the same grandiose style and anyone who can draw to that standard should have a gallery dedicated to his drawings alone.

My curiosity is not as to whether the pictures are fakes, but where the hell were the photos taken?